Camille Cusumano shares about her love for the Marin Headlands.
The Marin Headlands are urban wilds. They are connected intimately to San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge. The amphibious hills are wild and protected national land. I’ve cycled the bridge and the headlands looped thousands of times, mornings before wind rises. Cycling the headland is pulse raising, morale boosting, soul centering and psychotherapeutic.
Pedaling up the roller coaster ocean side route, I am fully in mind and body. Each of those thousands of rides has been a hero’s journey. My epiphanies and subtle transformations occur amid muscle power and concentration, amid beauty and broad views of the bridge, ocean, and the city I love. Each ride is exertion and remedy. My route begins near the marina, climbs past Fort Mason, then threads through the bridge’s towers and cables into another scale of time.
In the first wide-angle frame, I see war and peace. Life and death, the beginning of time, the origin of species and evolution on land, air, and sea. I know that all of that is there from having climbed those chunky hills so many times and looked and focused a little deeper each time, occasionally startled by the likes of a quail family, cougar, rabbit, or a red-shouldered hawk. These hills are mind-altering, mood-elevating elixir. Everyone needs a route that intuits the homeland of their whole life.
No matter how mobile you are, you find this. I have loved family, cities, lovers, ambitions, causes, and ideas. I have belonged imperfectly to all of them, but these hills ask less and give more. They ask only that I arrive under my own power. They give back pulse, humility, and joy. Someday when I am ash in memory, fling me here. With a Perspective, I’m Camille Cusumano.